Transcript

00:00:02

>> Anticipation rising in Japan with U.S. President Barack Obama in Asia. He'll be flying to Tokyo Wednesday, but the event many are waiting for, a historic visit to Hiroshima at the end of the week. Tokyo and Washington call it a step towards ridding the world of nuclear weapons, but there's also been criticism with some pointing out a double standard.

00:00:22

Obama is actually spending big on modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. And as Reuters Linda Sieg explains, Japan benefits from that.>> Japan historically and continues to paint itself, which is accurate, as the only country to have suffered an atomic bombings. And as a matter of policy rejects the possession of nuclear weapons, but the paradox is that Japan's security policy is fundamentally predicated on being protected by the US nuclear umbrella.

00:00:54

>> Washington and Tokyo say the visible be a chance to honor all the victims of war. But according to the White House, Obama will not apologize for the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And some say that's a missed opportunity.>> If the U.S. doesn't address that sort of question, then in a sense it lets Japan off the hook to not have to address its responsibility for leading the nation into war, into World War II, or for atrocities committed by Japanese military personnel during the war.

00:01:26

>> Officials on both sides of the Pacific have emphasized the visit is for looking forward, not back. Forgetting maybe impossible for survivors, but that doesn't mean Obama won't be welcome here.>>

FOREIGN]

> The fact that the president of the United States is visiting here for the first time since the war will remind us that peace is truly with us.

00:01:46

Thousands were killed when the first atomic bombs struck Hiroshima. By the end of the year, 140,000 people were dead.